My experience - Hollywood, FL

I am an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran and, after...

27 Jul 2012

I am an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran and, after completing my term of enlistment, had returned home to Miami and wished to get dental implants at Dr. Olga's office. I had paid in advance for a portion of my dental implant operation in order to avoid a later price rise for certain parts of the procedure. According to Olga's treatment plan statements, prices are good for 6 months. Everything went fine until the day of the actual surgery. Olga had only given me two implants when I had paid for three- a mistake on her part and her assistant Marsha's. Luckily I brought along my receipt and treatment plan, so I had to use these to prove to her that I had indeed paid for three implants. The third implant was put in eventually, and so I was then interested in getting a statement drawn to cover the operation for three crowns. Apparently, the price of each crown had risen by $100 since the time I had paid in advance for them. Not only this, but the amount I had paid wasn't even in Olga's records- another bungling.

At this point I got the impression that they just didn't care about my case and asked her to refund the rest of the money I had paid in advance for which no goods or services had yet been rendered. After constantly following up for over a month and a half, asking the status of my refund (money which should have been doing nothing except sitting in a patient account), I finally get a statement of charges listing not only the work I know had been done, but things I didn't even know I was being charged for. Among the charges listed were $240 for three re-cementations of my provisional crowns- something that wasn't listed on any previous statement and that I could have done myself with Fixodent had I known it would cost me that much. In addition, despite the fact that all three implants had been in place for less than four weeks, Olga went ahead and ordered materials for future operations- naively assuming that not only would the implants have no problems (not even an allergic reaction, which does happen in some cases), but that I would continue to put up with her practice's mistakes and lack of concern for handling my treatment in a professional manner. So charges for those ordered materials were also on the statement of charges.

Accompanying the list of charges was her agreement to refund me a certain portion of the money I had paid in advance. After this I had to wait more days and I finally demanded that they give me my refund check before the end of the month. I received the refund check, but it had bounced. Yes, she had the gall to write me a bad check after mis-handling my treatment file. The day the check was dishonored, I spoke to my bank about the matter and attempted to contact Dr. Olga. I called her office and inquired of her why her check had bounced, to which she replied "I don't want to talk about that.". I then took the matter to Hollywood police department, from which I obtained a 'Notice of Dishonored Check' form. I filled out the form and hand-delivered it to Dr. Olga- the form notifying her to either make good on the check within 7 days or face prosecution. Friday that same week, her assistant had the nerve to lure me into the office with the false claim that she had a good check written by Olga waiting to give to me. When I got to her office to pick up the check, Dr. Olga first pretended that I had no reason to be there and then threatened to call the police on me simply for approaching her the day before, to hand-deliver the 'Notice of Dishonored Check'. As of now, I am pressing criminal charges against Dr. Olga. No matter how skilled she may be, this does not make up for poor customer service.